World Peace Is So Fragile -- Let's Handle It With Care

British lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, ''Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.''

Three recent events have focused my mind wonderfully on the bleak prospects for peace in the world.

One was the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, one of the world's leading proponents of peaceful solutions to human conflict. The loss of such a forceful voice in behalf of non-violence is immense.

The second was a report by the Worldwatch Institute, a public-interest organization. That report pointed out that the United States and the Soviet Union have lost ground in international economic competition (when compared with Japan) because a hugely disproportionate percentage of the two countries' capital investment funds goes to buy armaments instead of to boost industrial production.

In 1984 international trade in arms exceeded the trade in grains. Moreover, it is hardly comforting that one of the chief U.S. exports is weapons. How has it come to pass that the arms industry has become such an important and obviously influential interest in U.S. business? The best weapon-sales promotion is either actual or potential conflict.

The third event to focus my mind was the poetry reading of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Russian poet, at Rollins College on March 3. He spoke the most humane words that I have heard lately in any language.

It seems to me that there is more than an economic deficit crisis in the United States. There is a lack of substance, of true human compassion, of words that fit the human experience and cause reflection and understanding of the need for world peace.

As Yevtushenko said, people make borders but then borders make people; true history shall not begin until all borders are eliminated.

We are right to be proud of the American evolution of ideals and principles, but we are not right to present those ideals under the guise of militarism -- of force to resolve conflict.

I was heartened by the recent example of the Philippines, where people with a strong democratic past have again demonstrated the principle that a leader governs only with the consent of the governed. Clearly, the best interests of the United States are not always served by backing despotic dictators simply because they profess to be friends of the United States.

So how has my mind been focused? It has been focused because, like the person to be hanged, I feel as though everyone can see the noose but refuses to see his neck in it. There are many places in the world -- the Middle East and Northern Ireland are two -- where conflicts appear to be intractable. The only answers that any side has to offer are military solutions, while the world situation becomes more dangerous, peace more fragile. Why is this so? We must have the moral outrage to cry enough. Enough!